


time travel

by mechanicalUniverses



Series: Simpatico Week [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Brainstorm is sad, It's one line and it's a little vague but just in case, M/M, Neither of them know what an acceptable social boundary is, One-Sided Relationship, Perceptor is trying his best, Social Awkwardness, Whump, suicidal idealization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanicalUniverses/pseuds/mechanicalUniverses
Summary: Perceptor has a talk with Brainstorm about time-travel and Quark.
Relationships: Brainstorm/Perceptor (Transformers), background Chromedome/Rewind
Series: Simpatico Week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033128
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43
Collections: SimpaticoWeek





	time travel

**Author's Note:**

> day two baby!!

Perceptor wasn’t sure what prompted him to sit with Brainstorm. Hell, he wasn’t sure what prompted him to enter _Swerve’s_ in the first place. Perhaps he’d had enough of the solitude the lab provided. That must be it. His processor needed stimulation, and a loud, busy environment was an obvious solution. Only, he hadn’t expected it to lead to him sitting down across from a morose looking Brainstorm and awkwardly making stilted attempts at conversations.

He said, ‘attempts.’ In reality, he hadn’t tried, too concerned about saying the wrong thing. Brainstorm has been giving him weird looks since he’d sat down with his drink and sipped at it in complete silence, but he hadn’t gotten up and left yet. So... perhaps that was a good sign. Or maybe Brainstorm felt obligated to stay here since Perceptor had sat down. He couldn’t be sure. Social cues didn’t come naturally to him.

Finally, Brainstorm let out a heavy vent, took off his blast mask, and sighed, “What do you want, Perceptor.”

Perceptor tensed. “You looked like you needed some company,” he said stiffly. This was true enough. Everyone kept a wide berth from Brainstorm these days as if his EM field could emit the same poison he’d used on them all those weeks ago. Even now, the nearby tables surrounding where Brainstorm and Perceptor were noticeably empty.

But if Brainstorm was aware of this, he did not seem all that bothered by it. In fact, he didn’t seem aware Perceptor had said anything at all. His optics were unfocused, glazing off to stare at something to the right of Perceptor’s shoulder. Perceptor followed his gaze. Unsurprisingly, it led to where Chromedome and Rewind were curled around each other in a booth. Their drinks were untouched, each of them content to drink in the sight of the other instead.

“You’re thinking about Rewind,” Perceptor quietly guessed.

“Ding, ding, ding,” Brainstorm said. His voice was flat, lifeless without his usual chirpy enthusiasm. “We have a winner.”

Perceptor spent a second too long trying to formulate a response. A brittle smile spread across Brainstorm’s face. “It’s fine,” he said. “You don’t have to pretend to care. You didn’t before, and I don’t know why you’re bothering now.”

Perceptor shuttered his optic. “I’m not pretending,” he said, faintly hurt, but he knew his hurt was unwarranted; he understood the doubtful reaction and couldn’t blame Brainstorm for having it. It wasn’t as though they’d had many positive interactions in the past to say otherwise.

“Hm.” Brainstorm’s mouth twisted in a way that told Perceptor he didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t willing to pursue the topic. “Sure.”

Perceptor resisted fidgeting with his monocle in the awkward wake of silence that followed. Instead, he tentatively asked, “May I ask what it is about Rewind you’re thinking about?”

Brainstorm shot him an unamused look that positively screamed, _Seriously?_ Perceptor’s frame heated up a bit; he’s never been a fantastic conversationalist, but he refused to let it be for lack of trying. So he tilted his helm with a slight flush to his face and waited until Brainstorm sighed and fell back against his seat, helm tipping up to stare listlessly at the ceiling. “What everyone else is thinking about,” he said dully. “The fact that he’s _back_. His second life. And just… Hah. What’re the chances of that?”

“Almost incalculably small,” Perceptor said quietly. “It’s really quite the marvel.” Brainstorm’s optics dimmed. Perceptor wanted to smack himself. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to aggravate you. I thought I should ask because you seemed upset, is all.”

“I am,” Brainstorm said simply. Perceptor blinked; he’d been expecting another non-answer. But Brainstorm, evidently mistaking his surprise to be towards something else, grimaced. “Well, no. I’m not upset about Rewind coming back. God, no, I’m—I’m glad he’s alive, and I’m glad that Chromedome got a good twist to his story for once. Mech’s had a _sad_ life.” Perceptor did not know much about Chromedome’s past aside from his work with Prowl, so he merely nodded. Brainstorm made a frustrated sound. “This is making me look like a complete aft. Why are you even asking? You don’t care.”

Perceptor’s scope dipped thoughtfully. After a moment, he finally said, “That’s not necessarily true. You are hurting. It’s only right someone should at least ask how you’re doing.”

Brainstorm gave him a long, considering look. Like he was searching for something—No, _testing_ Perceptor for something. Perceptor remained silent, patiently waiting as the orange light of Brainstorm’s optics washed over him.

He seemed to find whatever answer he was looking for, because finally, he warily asked, “You want the short answer or the long answer?”

“Whichever suits you best.”

“Short it is. How am I doing? Fragging terrible. Thanks for asking.” Brainstorm flapped his servo at him. “You can go now.”

Perceptor hummed, but he did not move. “That is to be expected. But I’m afraid I do not know what exactly this has to do with Rewind.”

Rewind’s lively, bright bout of laughter cut across the bar chatter as Chromedome murmured something in his audial. Brainstorm fixed Perceptor with a piercing stare.

“Have you ever loved someone to the point of invention, Perceptor?” he suddenly asked, deadly serious.

Perceptor shook his helm. “No.”

Oh, he loved to invent. That certainly couldn’t be denied. But that wasn’t what Brainstorm asked. He’d asked if Perceptor had created something that had never before existed in the whole grand vastness of the universe, all in the name of love, and for that, Perceptor could not say he had.

“Mm. I don’t blame you.” His wings drooped even further, making him look impossibly small as he fixed his gaze on some unseeable spot on the table. “Did I ever tell you about why I made that briefcase?”

Again, Perceptor said, “No.”

Brainstorm’s face smoothed over into a pensive wistfulness. “All I ever wanted was for Quark to be safe. I loved him, you know. I loved him with everything I had, and I gave everything I had to get that silly old sod back. I was ready to erase the entire _concept_ of my existence so he—and everyone else, I guess, but it started with him—could live. I invented a way, possibly the _only_ way, to inconsequentially _time-travel_ so he could live. Well,” he said, shooting Perceptor a faintly amused glance, “it _would’ve_ been inconsequential.”

“Your work is incredible,” Perceptor blurted. “The designs behind your briefcases are nothing short of ingenious, as are your proofs for the paradox locks, and—” He stopped when he noticed Brainstorm raising an optical ridge at him. This time, Perceptor really did flush shamefully. “I—I apologize. I don’t know what came over me. That was highly inappropriate. Please. Continue.”

Brainstorm gave him a careful look. Then, he chuckled bitterly. “It _was_ incredible,” he corrected. “You and Rodimus destroyed all of it.”

Perceptor cringed. “I… yes, I suppose that is deserved. If it means anything to you, I didn’t particularly want to do it.”

That, at the very least, he could say was true. He couldn’t stand destroying Brainstorm’s beautiful feats of engineering. It’d almost physically hurt, watching the dying sparks the electronics in the briefcases coughed up as the flame fused the lot of it into a melted, blackened mess. Guilt twisted around Perceptor’s spark like a tangled net free-floating in an ocean, suffocating and cutting. He should’ve at least tried to argue that it was in their best interest to spare one of them for the sake of science. Rodimus could be reasoned with when it came to these kinds of things. Instead, Perceptor stood by and watched it all burn, compliant to the end. The timecases weren’t just extraordinary pieces of technology he’d destroyed; they were answers to questions he’d had for millennia. They were the definition of a new future of possibilities, and possible a whole new future entirely.

And now they were gone.

“We could build them again,” said Perceptor.

“They wouldn’t like that,” said Brainstorm.

“I know.”

“So why do it? There’s no point in _you_ of all mechs going down with me.”

Perceptor didn’t know.

Brainstorm sighed. “It doesn’t really matter. The point is, it wasn’t enough. I don’t think there ever could have been ‘enough.’ It was bound to happen anyway.” He tipped his helm towards Chromedome and Rewind with age-old yearning burning away at his smile. “I made up a whole new rulebook for the universe to abide by, and it wasn’t enough to get him back. It didn’t matter. _None_ of it mattered. I gave Quark everything I had to offer. And now? I’ve got nothing. I’m not allowed in my own lab. Nautica hates me. No one trusts me, and I can’t blame them. My life’s work is a pile of melted circuits. Quark’s still gone, and it was Chromedome who got his conjunx back from the dead.” Brainstorm’s laugh was this horrible, weak little thing that tugged at Perceptor’s spark. “I sometimes wish I’d been left in the past. At least I had something worth living for there.”

Perceptor once believed he knew failure. It’d taken more from him than he thought possible. His friends, his home, his faith. But he’d never seen it take everything _but_ life from someone, scraping out every last thing they had inside them until they were a hollow, bleeding vessel for defeat.

He looked at Brainstorm. Really looked at him. There was something tired worn into his frame, an exhaustion that ran so deep, there was no other way Brainstorm could be perceived. Gone was the puff-chested, bravado-filled Brainstorm Perceptor had somehow managed to convince himself into believing to be callous, distant, and cowardly. He couldn’t believe it to be the same Brainstorm before him. This one, who was once filled with so much devotion and passion, it hurt him to hold it all.

Never, in all of his functioning, had Perceptor been so wholly _wrong._

“I’m sorry,” said Perceptor.

“It’s not like it’s your fault,” said Brainstorm.

“No,” said Perceptor. He reached out and grasped Brainstorm’s servo with his own, squeezing it tight. “I’m simply… sorry.”

Brainstorm stared at their linked servos. Then, tentatively, hesitantly, like he was afraid he’d lose this too, he squeezed back.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Me, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! if you wanna reblog this fic on tumblr as well, you can do so [here!](https://scintillating-galaxias.tumblr.com/post/636236608733118464/simpatico-week-day-2-time-travel) <3 thank you again, and i hope you have a lovely day!
> 
> edit: i forgot! the "have you ever loved someone to the point of invention?" is very much not an original line. i wish it was, because i love the quote it's referencing a lot, but alas. anyway, the quote is actually [from this!](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8653229-there-are-jokes-about-breast-surgeons-you-know---something-like--) i meant to have this quote sourced here in these notes but i forgot. so sorry for any confusion i might have caused!


End file.
